Personal Media Use and Production Diary

My Media usage during the course of ten days

Raw Data:

From first glance at the table and graph above (Table One and Figure One), it is evident that my youtube minutes are the most frequent, regular and long. On the other hand, there is a distinct lack of magazines in my media usage and almost no newspapers and radio.

Old Media/Traditional Media

In comparing old and new media usage and production in table two and figure two, my media consumption is plainly skewed towards new media and nowhere near as much usage of old media. However, there is a surge in my old media use between days 6 and 9 although my usage and production of new media stays relatively the same.

Weekend/Weekday

Contrary to the outcome expected, the figures 3 and 4 indicate that there is not a great difference within my media usage and production between weekends and week days. However, this brings into question whether my living environment effects my media usage.

At College/At my Grandparents house

I was at the college for Days 1-5 and 10, and at my Grandparent’s house through the Days 6-9. 

According to figures 5 and 6, it can be observed that there is a significant change in my media usage and production in terms of old and new media depending on my living conditions and environment.

Audio/Print/Visual

Here, also, contrarily to my previous predictions, it appears that I have a much higher usage of audio media, rather than print media, of which I have 29% in and visual media which I have only 5% in. This is probably brought about by the fact that audio media does not require as much concentration as the other two forms of media, for me anyways, and therefore can be multitasked to. For example, when I read the newspaper, I generally just read the newspaper, but when I listen to the radio, it is going to and from somewhere.

Formal Analysis:

Within my own personal media usage, there is a significant abundance of the use of new media to produce media through social networking than the intake of media through the old media. With the new media, Web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0, there are significantly more opportunities for being creative in media production for non-professional people like myself. However, this media usage was influenced mildly by the weekend of weekday question, but heavily by the environmental living conditions I was in. I usually live at a college on campus with 200 other girls my age with whom I interact every day. In this environment, I definitely use more new media than old media (see figures 5), however with my grandparents who were brought up in a generation in which they only had access to old media, I still use new media but interact much more than I normally would with old media – which I enjoy. There is less access to old media at college unless it is in a public place, such as the common room which houses the television and newspapers. I also discovered that I use a larger amount of audio media compared to visual and print media, but this is due to the fact that I can listen to media through youtube or the radio without having to concentrate too much, but cannot do this with the other forms of media. Therefore, I listen to audio media whilst doing other tasks and accumulate more time for the media use there. Also, with convenient audio and visual media in youtube and other such sites on the internet, it is much easier to choose what we as an audience want to hear or learn about and design our own form of communication, rather than the traditional rigid structure of radio and television, where you can only watch or listen to what is chosen to be shown to you. However, this is not always a positive development as I, personally, learn more from the journalism in traditional media especially because I cannot choose what I want to learn about, and as a result learn a lot about everything. And so although the new media such as youtube can be a brilliantly convenient way to reorganise communication and journalism, it cannot replace the traditional media as there is so much to be gained by having professionals judge what you should and should not need to know.

In comparison to other journalism students, I am in the majority for most of the categories, starting with the basics: an 18year old female in a Bachelor of Journalism and Arts as a domestic student. I spend roughly about 2-3 hours a day on the internet which is the same amount of time 29.6% of the people in my course spend on the internet. As with most other students, I create media through social networking with new media. I watch less than one hour on average of television a day and the same for radio, which puts me with roughly 15% of the class. The reason for this could be that most students answered that they listen to radio most in the car, and as I live in a college and have just moved to Australia, do not have access to one. As I also have limited access to television, I fall under the 67.8% of the students who get their news from online sources rather than the majority which was via the internet.

Conclusion:

I am a sheep within a herd within media usage and production. I fit under the majority of the students in journalism, using mostly social networking and new media, producing media myself rather than absorbing journalism and communication though old media. However, this media usage and production is heavily influenced by factors such as environmental change, and I cannot disregard old media despite the new age because traditional media offers a wider range of journalism and information on more issues, whereas new media allows for us to pick-and-choose the information we want to know. In this way, I have to have a balance between these two forms of media, old and new, so that I take the greatest advantage of the media available to me and gain better access to journalism and communication.